Guests enjoy a trail ride at Covell’s California Clydesdale Ranch, in a story from early this year. Judges called the Times Travel section “an amazing resource,” as well as “fun, informative, and quirky.”

The Los Angeles Times Travel section has won the gold award in the 2018 Lowell Thomas competition, recognized as the most prestigious in travel journalism.

The awards were announced Monday in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the annual conference of the Society of American Travel Writers.

In recognizing The Times as having the nation’s top newspaper travel section, the judges called it an “amazing resource,” saying that its articles are, like so much travel, “fun, informative and quirky” and “fling travelers deep into astonishing places.”